How do you know who you’re talking to?

1st April, 2011 - Posted by stellacollins - No Comments

How do you know who you’re talking to?

Knowing who you’re communicating with saves time and effort, whether you’re influencing, selling or negotiating because when you know who you’re talking to you have far more idea about what they want.  And this is the same whether you’re communicating face to face or in writing.

When people want to hear what you’ve got to say, persuading them becomes easier.

So how do you work out what they want?  Begin by thinking about their personality, needs and attitudes.

When you know someone you often recognise their preferences.  Do they prefer to have lots of facts and figures or are they an ideas and possibilities type of thinker?  Provide information that is relevant to them, enthuse them, and keep a clear picture of what they want to hear.

What if you’ve never met them – or there are lots of them?  Perhaps you’re writing a report or a proposal….

One way is to create a ‘Ted’ or ‘Tess’ for yourself – to create a caricature of the ideal person that you want to read your document so that you influence them directly to take action.   Even if you can’t describe them completely accurately you will be able to build a relatively accurate picture based on what you know.

What sort of person would be the likely reader of your document?   Think about what they do at work, their hobbies, age, where they live, what they wear, favourite music and food, where they go out.  Make your character rich and detailed so that you really get to know them.  You might find a picture that captures them, or even draw one.

Keep Ted or Tess in mind when you are planning a particular communication to ensure that it’s relevant to them – after all if nobody reads what you’ve written, or listens to what you said then what was the point of doing it?

(Who did I decide was Ted or Tess for this blog entry?  I think you are between 29 and 36, have a science degree, live away from your original home, have colleagues and work contacts in other parts of the world, enjoy the intellectual challenges of your job, have goals to progress in your career, spend part of each day writing for work, have out of work interests like sport, music or history, enjoy travelling and are on Facebook or Linked in.   Let me know how accurate I was).